Research - Artificial Sweeteners
Frequent Consumption of Sugar- and Artificially Sweetened Beverages and Natural and Bottled Fruit Juices Is Associated with an Increased Risk of Metabolic Syndrome in a Mediterranean Population at High Cardiovascular Disease Risk
1–3 C´ıntia Ferreira-Peˆgo,4,5 Nancy Babio,4,5 Maira Bes-Rastrollo,5,7,18 Dolores Corella,5,8 Ramon Estruch,5,6,9 Emilio Ros,5,10 Montserrat Fito,´ 5,11 Llu´ıs Serra-Majem,5,6,12 Fernando Aros, ´ 5,6,13 Miguel Fiol,5,14 Jose Manuel Santos-Lozano, ´ 5,15 Carlos Mun˜ oz-Bravo,16 Xavier Pinto,´ 9,17 Miguel Ruiz-Canela,5,7,18 and Jordi Salas-Salvado´ 4–6* on behalf of the PREDIMED Investigators
Abstract
Background: The relation between the consumption of sweetened beverages and metabolic syndrome (MetS) is controversial. Objective: This analysis evaluated the associations between intakes of sugar-sweetened beverages (SSBs), artificially sweetened beverages, and natural and bottled fruit juices and the incidence of MetS in elderly individuals at high risk of cardiovascular disease (CVD) and without MetS at baseline.
Methods: We prospectively examined 1868 participants free of MetS at baseline from the PREDIMED (PREvencion con ´ DIeta MEDiterranea) study. MetS was defined by using the updated harmonized criteria of the International Diabetes ´ Federation, the American Heart Association, and National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute. Energy and nutrient intakes were evaluated at baseline and then yearly by using a validated 137-item food-frequency questionnaire. Multivariableadjusted HRs for MetS and its components were estimated from mean intakes during follow-up. We compared the 2 highest consumption categories (1–5 and >5 servings/wk) with the lowest category (<1 serving/wk).
Results: A total of 930 incident cases of MetS were documented during a median follow-up of 3.24 y. When we compared consumption of >5 servings/wk with consumption of <1 serving/wk, multivariable HRs (95% CIs) for MetS incidence were 1.43 (1.00, 2.15), 1.74 (1.26, 2.41), 1.30 (1.00, 1.69), and 1.14 (1.04, 1.65) for SSBs, artificially sweetened beverages, natural fruit juices, and bottled fruit juices, respectively.
Conclusions: The occasional consumption of SSBs and artificially sweetened beverages (1–5 servings/wk) was not associated with the incidence of MetS in middle-aged and elderly individuals at high risk of CVD. The consumption of >5 servings/wk of all of the types of beverages analyzed was associated with an increased risk of MetS and some of its components. However, for SSBs and bottled fruit juices these associations must be interpreted with caution because of the low frequency of consumption in this population.
Source ; The Journal of Nutrition
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Artificial Sweeteners May Raise Diabetes Risk
By Salynn Boyles, Contributing Writer, MedPage TodayReviewed by Zalman S. Agus, MD; Emeritus Professor, Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania and Dorothy Caputo, MA, BSN, RN, Nurse Planner
Consumption of noncaloric artificial sweeteners appeared to induce glucose intolerance in both mice and humans by altering gut microbiota in a series of experiments conducted by researchers in Israel.
Rather than helping to prevent obesity and metabolic disease, use of noncalorie sweeteners may have contributed to the epidemic rise of these conditions, wrote Eran Elinav, MD, of the Weizmann Institute of Science in Rehovot, Israel, and colleagues, online in the journal Nature.
Their research is among the first to examine the impact of a specific food additive on gut microbiota and the findings are compelling, said microbiome researcher Suzanne Devkota, PhD, of Joslin Diabetes Center and Harvard Medical School. Devkota was not involved with the research.
"This was a very well done study, and the fact that they had a human component was a big plus," she told MedPage Today.
Artificial Sweetener Research Mixed
Five no-calorie or low-calorie artificial sweeteners -- saccharin, sucralose, aspartame, neotame and acesulfame K -- are approved for use in the U.S. by the FDA and sweeteners derived from the Stevia plant extract Reb-A have been designated "generally recognized as safe."
While some studies have linked noncaloric sweetener use to an increased risk for obesity and diabetes, others suggest a protective effect or no effect at all. Interpretation of these studies has been complicated by the fact that noncaloric artificial sweeteners are often consumed by people who have some manifestations of metabolic syndrome, the researchers wrote.
They further noted that most noncaloric artificial sweeteners (NAS) pass through the human gastrointestinal tract without being digested, so they directly encounter intestinal microbiota.
"Microbiota compositions and function are modulated by diet in the healthy lean state as well as in obesity and diabetes mellitus, and in turn microbiota alterations have been associated with propensity to metabolic syndrome," Elinav and colleagues wrote.
Their studies in animals and humans examined NAS-mediated modulation of microbiota composition and function and their effects on host glucose metabolism.
NAS Fed Mice Developed Glucose Intolerance
In an effort to better understand the effects of NAS on glucose homeostasis, the researchers added commercial formulations of saccharin, sucralose, or aspartame to the drinking water of 10-week-old C57/BI/6 mice. Control mice were fed only water or water supplemented with either glucose or sucralose.
At week 11, the three groups that consumed water alone, glucose and sucrose had comparable glucose tolerance curves, while the three NAS-fed mouse groups developed marked glucose intolerance (P<0.001). Saccharin exerted the most pronounced effect, and the researchers further studied this sweetener by feeding the mice a high-fat (60% calories from fat) diet while they consumed either commercial saccharine or pure glucose. As in the earlier experiment, the saccharin-fed mice developed glucose intolerance and the control mice did not.
"Taken together, these results suggest that NAS promote metabolic derangements in a range of formulations, doses, mouse strains, and diets paralleling human conditions, in both the lean and the obese state," the researchers wrote.
To test whether the observed NAS effect was regulated in the gut microbiota, the researchers treated mouse groups consuming commercial or pure NAS in the lean and high-fat diet states with a Gram-negative-targeting broad-spectrum antibiotic regimen (ciprofloxacin and metronidazole) while maintaining the mice on their diet and sweetener regimens.
After 4 weeks of antibiotic treatment, differences in glucose intolerance between NAS-consuming mice and controls were abolished in both the lean and obese states. Similar effects were seen with the Gram-positive-targeting antibiotic vancomycin.
"These results suggest that NAS-induced glucose intolerance is mediated through alterations to the commensal microbiota, with contributions from diverse bacterial taxa," the researchers wrote.
Fecal Experiments Studied Causal Link
In an effort to determine if the microbiota role was causal, the researchers performed fecal transplantation experiments, by transferring the microbiota configuration from mice on normal-chow diet drinking commercial saccharin or glucose (control) into normal-chow-consuming germ-free mice. Recipients of microbiota from mice consuming commercial saccharin exhibited impaired glucose tolerance compared with control microbiota recipients 6 days after transfer (P<0.03)
The researchers also examined the fecal microbiota composition of the various mouse groups by sequencing their 16S ribosomal RNA gene. In this series of experiments, they demonstrated that saccharin directly modulated the composition and function of the microbiome to induce a harmful imbalance of intestinal microbes (dysbiosis), accounting for the downstream glucose intolerance phenotype in the mammalian host.
NAS Raised Metabolic Risk in Humans
To study the effects of NAS in humans, the researchers examined the relationship between long-term NAS consumption (determined through food frequency questionnaires) and dysbiosis and various parameters of metabolic risk using data collected from 381 people who did not have diabetes (44% male; mean age 43.3, SD 13.2) participating in an ongoing clinical nutritional study.
"We found significant positive correlations between NAS consumption and several metabolic-syndrome-related clinical parameters, including increased weight and waist-to-hip ratio, higher fasting blood glucose, glycosylated HbA1c [percentage] and glucose tolerance test (GTT, measures of impaired glucose tolerance), and elevated serum alanine aminotransferase," the researchers wrote.
Levels of HbA1c, indicative of glucose concentration over the previous 3 months, were significantly increased when comparing a subgroup of high NAS consumers (40 people) to non-NAS consumers (236 people, rank sum P<0.002). The increase remained significant when adjusted for body mass index (rank sum P<0.015).
When Elinav and colleagues characterized 16S rRNA in 172 randomly selected members of the cohort, they found statistically significant positive correlations between multiple taxonomic entities and NAS consumption, including the Enterobacteriaceae family and the Actinobacteria phylum.
"Importantly, we did not detect statistically significant correlations between operational taxonomic unit abundances and BMI, suggesting that the correlations are not due to the distinct BMI of NAS consumers," they wrote.
In an effort to determine if the relationship between human NAS consumption and blood glucose control is causative, the researchers followed seven healthy volunteers (five males and two females, ages 28-36) who did not normally consume NAS or foods containing NAS for 1 week (days two-seven). During this week, participants consumed the FDA's maximal acceptable daily intake of commercial saccharin (5 mg per kg body weight as three divided daily doses equivalent to 120 mg). The participants were monitored by continuous glucose measurements and daily GTT.
"Notably, even in this short-term, 7-day exposure period, most individuals (four of seven) developed significantly poorer glycemic response 5-7 days after NAS consumption, compared with their individual glycemic response on days one-four," the researchers wrote.
Personalized Response to NAS Found
The microbiome configurations of theses NAS responders, assessed using 16S rRNA analysis, also clustered differently from the three nonresponders. Microbiomes from nonresponders showed little changes in composition during the study week, wheres pronounced compositional changes were seen in NAS responders.
To further examine whether this NAS-induced dysbiosis had a causal role in glucose intolerance, the researchers transferred stool from before day one or after day seven NAS exposure from two NAS responders and two nonresponders into groups of normal chow-fed germ-free mice.
Transfer of day seven stool from NAS responders was found to induce significant glucose intolerance in the mice, compared with day one stool from the same people. In contrast, D7 stools transferred from two NAS nonresponders induced normal glucose tolerance which was similar to that of mice transferred with day one stool.
"Our results from short- and long-term human NAS consumer cohorts suggest that human individuals feature a personalized response to NAS, possibly stemming from differences in their microbiota composition and function," the researchers wrote.
The researchers further suggested that these individualized nutritional responses may be driven by personalized functional differences in the microbiome.
Expert: All Things in Moderation
Diabetes researcher Robert Rizza, MD, of the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn., who was not involved with the research, called the findings "fascinating."
He noted that earlier research suggests people who eat large amounts of artificial sweeteners have higher incidences of obesity and diabetes. The new research, he said, suggests there may be a causal link.
"This was a very thorough and carefully done study, and I think the message to people who use artificial sweeteners is they need to use them in moderation," he said. "Drinking 17 diet sodas a day is probably a bad idea, but one or two may be OK."
Source : MedPage Today
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Aspartame Associated with Increased Risk of Blood Cancers in Long-Term Human Study
Aspartame is an artificial sweetener used in diet soda and over 6,000 other sugar-free or "diet" products. New research1 linking aspartame to cancer in some individuals has sparked a flurry of commentary, including an "apology" from Brigham and Women's Hospital, a Harvard University teaching facility, for promoting the results2.
I first found out about the study when ABC News contacted me and requested that I provide them with a comprehensive analysis of this 40-page study within an hour. Fortunately, I have extensively reviewed this topic and was able to provide their requested review.
Funding was provided by grants from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) and the National Cancer Institute (NCI).
The Harvard hospital originally sent out a press release with the headline: "The truth isn't sweet when it comes to artificial sweeteners." Alas, just half an hour before the release of the study, the hospital suddenly got cold feet, issuing the following statement:
"Upon review of the findings, the consensus of our scientific leaders is that the data is weak, and that BWH Media Relations was premature in the promotion of this work. We apologize for the time you have invested in this story."
According to Erin McDonough3, senior vice president of communication and public affairs, this was "the first time something like this had ever happened in her 25 years of working in media relations."
NBC News stated4:
"Not all science deserves publicity. Some is not done well. Some comes to equivocal conclusions and serves solely to alert other researchers of the need for further study. The research... about a potential cancer from aspartame falls squarely in that second category. If such a study does get attention, it can often increase the confusion and anger that many people feel about science in general – and the study of possible risks and benefits of our diet, in particular."
None of this surprises me. After all, can you imagine the liability the food and beverage industries, not to mention virtually every public health agency in the US, would face were there convincing evidence that aspartame is carcinogenic? They simply cannot afford such evidence to be accepted.
But make no mistake about it, this study is of great importance because it's the most comprehensive and longest human study — spanning 22 years — that has ever looked at aspartame toxicity. The study evaluates the effect between aspartame intake and cancer, and they found a clear association between aspartame consumption and non-Hodgkin's Lymphoma and leukemia.
Ignoring First Long-Term Human Study Would Be a MAJOR Mistake This is the first large-scale observational human study to report an association between aspartame consumption and blood cancers. The long-term nature of this study is really crucial because one of the primary tricks companies use to hide the toxicity of their products is short-term tests.
As the study mentions, the longest study prior to this one was only four and half months, far too short to reveal any toxicity from chronic exposure. Unfortunately, because there are so many of these short-term trials, they get away with saying that aspartame is one of the most studied food additives ever made and no health concerns have ever been discovered. The beverage industry was quick to respond5 to the study saying aspartame has been "deemed safe for decades by the world's leading toxicologists."
Well, they simply didn't look long enough! But the average person does not realize that all those industry-funded studies were so pathetically short, and the media doesn't inform them of this fact either. Hence, people are easily misled.
A number of animal studies have clearly documented the association between aspartame and cancer, as the study points out. But what most researchers do not appreciate is that humans are the only animals that do NOT have the protective mechanism to compensate for methanol toxicity. So evaluating methanol toxicity in animals is a flawed model for testing human toxicity.
This is due to alcohol dehydrogenase (ADH). In humans, methanol is allowed to be transported in the body to susceptible tissues where this enzyme, ADH, then converts it to formaldehyde, which damages protein and DNA that lead to the increased risk of cancer and autoimmune disease.
Interestingly, the previous AARP Diet and Health Study, which did not find an association with aspartame and cancer, used fruit juice as the control. Most are unaware that canned or bottled fruit juice is loaded with methanol that dissociates from the pectin over time and can actually cause similar problems as aspartame. This does not occur in freshly consumed fruits and vegetables, only ones that are bottled or canned. Hence no major difference could be discerned between the aspartame and the control group.
Why Was Aspartame More Toxic in Men than Women? The health statistics for nearly 48,000 men and over 77,000 women over the age of 20 were reviewed for the featured study. They found that men who consumed more than one diet soda per day had an increased risk of developing multiple myeloma and non-Hodgkin's lymphoma. Interestingly enough, this association was not found in women.
Leukemia was associated with diet soda intake in both sexes.
One hypothesis for the difference between the sexes is that men have a higher activity of the enzyme ADH, as I mentioned earlier, which metabolizes methanol and converts it to formaldehyde. More formaldehyde circulating in your blood would naturally have more opportunity to cause greater damage.
While the findings from this study add credible evidence that consuming aspartame over a long period of time can pose significant health risks, it also demonstrates that our understanding of the precise mechanism of harm is still lacking and needs to be investigated further, as it's unclear why the women in this study didn't experience the same increased rates of cancer.
It's possible that there is some hormonally mediated protection against the adverse effects of aspartame in women, in addition to men having higher ADH activity, but the study was not designed to answer that question.
All in all however, I believe the study offers significant supporting evidence of the danger that "diet" drinks and foods pose. Many have indeed been injured by aspartame — there are more adverse reports to the FDA on aspartame than all other food additives combined. It's also widely known how massive industry and government collusion at the FDA was ultimately responsible for its approval after it failed to be approved for many years.
Although the authors' summary conclusion mentions they do not rule out the possibility of chance for this association, it's worth noting that this is because they could not offer a conclusive explanation for the difference between the sexes.
I carefully reviewed this study in its entirety, and found it to be extremely well executed. While the mechanism responsible for the difference between the sexes for certain cancers need to be studied further, a biological mechanism for cancer from aspartame does exist, which I'll review in a moment. Furthermore, it was the reviewers of the study that pushed back during the editing process, insisting that it should be made clear that chance was a plausible explanation for the findings6.
Lead researcher Eva Schernhammer, MD, DrPH stated in the original press release (which has since been removed):
"The sex difference we observed deserves consideration. There are many possible explanations in this, one being chance, however these differences could be related to a yet-to-be-discovered risk factor for lymphoma and leukemia, which are associated with soda consumption in men, but not women."
Methyl Alcohol — The Root of the Problem with Aspartame Aspartame is primarily made up of aspartic acid and phenylalanine. The phenylalanine has been synthetically modified to carry a methyl group, which provides the majority of the sweetness. That phenylalanine methyl bond, called a methyl ester, is very weak, which allows the methyl group on the phenylalanine to easily break off and form methanol. This is in sharp contrast to naturally-occurring methanol found in certain fruits and vegetables, where it is firmly bonded to pectin, allowing the methanol to be safely passed through your digestive tract.
If the methyl alcohol is broken off from the phenylalanine, as easily happens when drinks sweetened with it are exposed to higher temperatures, it no longer tastes sweet. This is precisely what happened to most of the diet soda sent to the Middle East for US troops. They received non-sweet sodas that were loaded with dangerous levels of methanol, which can be toxic when it's in this already broken down state.
Methanol acts as a Trojan horse; it's carried into susceptible tissues in your body, like your brain and bone marrow, where the ADH enzyme converts it into formaldehyde, which wreaks havoc with sensitive proteins and DNA. All other animals, on the other hand, have a protective mechanism that allows methanol to be broken down into harmless formic acid...
According to aspartame expert Dr. Woodrow Monte, there's a major biochemical problem with methanol in humans, because of the difference in how it's metabolized, compared to all other animals. This is why toxicology testing on animals is a flawed model. It doesn't fully apply to humans.
Both animals and humans have small structures called peroxisomes in each cell. There are a couple of hundred in every cell of your body, which are designed to detoxify a variety of chemicals. Peroxisome contains catalase, which help detoxify methanol. Other chemicals in the peroxisome convert the formaldehyde to formic acid, which is harmless, but this last step occurs only in animals.
When methanol enters the peroxisome of every animal except humans, it gets into that mechanism. Humans do have the same number of peroxisomes in comparable cells as animals, but human peroxisomes cannot convert the toxic formaldehyde into harmless formic acid.
So again, to recap: In humans, the methyl alcohol travels through your blood vessels into sensitive areas, such as your brain, that are loaded with alcohol dehydrogenase (ADH), which converts methanol to formaldehyde, and since there's no catalase present, the formaldehyde is free to cause enormous damage in your tissues.
Saccharin and Aspartame Cause Greater Weight Gain than Sugar In related news, a study published on October 19 in the journal Appetite7, found that compared with sucrose (regular table sugar), saccharin and aspartame caused greater weight gain in adult rats, and this weight gain was unrelated to caloric intake. The underlying mechanism was not determined.
However, a number of studies have already shown that consuming artificial sweeteners breaks the connection between a sweet sensation and a high-calorie food, thereby changing your body's ability to regulate intake naturally. In a similar 2008 study8, rats that ate yogurt sweetened with an artificial sweetener consumed more calories, gained more weight, and put on more body fat than rats that ate yogurt sweetened with sugar. Other studies, too, have shown that eating artificial sweeteners might hinder your body's ability to estimate calorie intake, thus boosting your inclination to overindulge.
The fact that aspartame is NOT a dieter's best friend has been known by scientists for some time. The problem is this news has not received the necessary traction in the media...
For example, a study from 19869, which included nearly 80,000 women, found that those who used artificial sweeteners were significantly more likely than non-users to gain weight over time, regardless of initial weight. According to the authors, the results "were not explicable by differences in food consumption patterns," and concluded that:
" The data do not support the hypothesis that long-term artificial sweetener use either helps weight loss or prevents weight gain."
Another more recent study with the telling title of Gain Weight by "Going Diet?" Artificial Sweeteners and the Neurobiology of Sugar Cravings, published in 201010, found that epidemiologic data suggest artificially sweetened foods and beverages do not reduce weight. Quite the contrary:
"Several large scale prospective cohort studies found positive correlation between artificial sweetener use and weight gain. The San Antonio Heart Study examined 3,682 adults over a seven- to eight-year period in the 1980s.
When matched for initial body mass index (BMI), gender, ethnicity, and diet, drinkers of artificially sweetened beverages consistently had higher BMIs at the follow-up, with dose dependence on the amount of consumption... Saccharin use was also associated with eight-year weight gain in 31,940 women from the Nurses' Health Study conducted in the 1970s.
Similar observations have been reported in children.
A two-year prospective study involving 166 school children found that increased diet soda consumption was associated with higher BMI Z-scores at follow-up, indicating weight gain. The Growing Up Today Study, involving 11,654 children aged 9 to 14 also reported positive association between diet soda and weight gain for boys. For each daily serving of diet beverage, BMI increased by 0.16 kg/m2... A cross-sectional study looking at 3,111 children and youth found diet soda drinkers had significantly elevated BMI."
Are Your Health Problems Related to Artificial Sweeteners? Many people belatedly realize they've been suffering reactions to one artificial sweetener or another. If you suspect an artificial sweetener might be to blame for a symptom you're having, a good way to help you weed out the culprit is to do an elimination challenge. It's easy to do, but you must read the ingredient labels for everything you put in your mouth to make sure you're avoiding ALL artificial sweeteners. To determine if you're having a reaction to artificial sweeteners, take the following steps:
- Eliminate all artificial sweeteners from your diet for two weeks.
- After two weeks of being artificial sweetener-free, reintroduce your artificial sweetener of choice in a significant quantity (about three servings daily). Avoid other artificial sweeteners during this period.
- Do this for one to three days and notice how you feel, especially as compared to when you were consuming no artificial sweeteners.
- If you don't notice a difference in how you feel after re-introducing your primary artificial sweetener for a few days, it's a safe bet you're able to tolerate it acutely, meaning your body doesn't have an immediate, adverse response. However, this doesn't mean your health won't be damaged in the long run.
- If you've been consuming more than one type of artificial sweetener, you can repeat steps 2 through 4 with the next one on your list.
Also, if you do experience side effects from aspartame, please report it to the FDA (if you live in the United States) without delay. It's easy to make a report — just go to the FDA Consumer Complaint Coordinator page, find the phone number for your state, and make a call reporting your reaction. There's no telling just how many reports they might need to receive before taking another look at aspartame's safety and reconsidering their stance. But I CAN tell you, the more reports they get, the more likely that is to happen. So if you suspect you have experienced an adverse reaction from aspartame (or any other drug or food additive), please take a moment to make this important call.
Are there ANY Safe and Healthy Alternatives to Sugar? The best strategy is to lower your use of sugar and eat right for your nutritional type and make sure you have enough high quality fats. Once your body has the proper fuel, your sweet cravings will radically diminish and you will be satisfied without them. If you still have cravings it is a strong suggestion you need to further refine your attempt to identify the right fuel for your body. My free Nutritional Plan can help you do this in a step by step fashion.
If you need a sweetener you could use stevia or Lo Han, both of which are safe natural sweeteners. Remember, if you struggle with high blood pressure, high cholesterol, diabetes or extra weight, then you have insulin sensitivity issues and would benefit from avoiding ALL sweeteners.
If you're having trouble weaning yourself off soda, try Turbo Tapping. Turbo Tapping is a clever use of the Emotional Freedom Technique (EFT), specifically designed to resolve many aspects of an addiction in a concentrated period of time.
Source : Dr Mercola
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The Synthetic Sweetener Splenda is a Poisonous Chlorocarbon
“Splenda” is the branded name of the popular synthetic sweetener and food additive whose generic name is “sucralose”. Both very sweet-sounding names have been cunningly invented by some Food, Inc marketing team. But, the most chemically accurate term for this ubiquitous substance is: trichlorinated sucrose. Splenda is hidden in over 3000 common foods, candy, beverages and chewing gum.
Sucrose, the base molecule, is common table sugar and, being a natural substance, can’t be patented in its natural form. However, drug and food corporations do have their clever ways to fool Mother Nature, the public and the FDA into granting them monopoly privileges on their way to billions of dollars of profit, even at the expense of the public health. Splenda has replaced the toxic sweetener NutraSweet (aspartame) as the number 1 artificial, non-nutritive sweetener in America because of increasing awareness of its toxicity and a cause of chronic illnesses around the world.
Splenda unproven to be safe at any dose
Sucralose is synthesized by substituting, in a chemist’s vat, three naturally-occurring hydroxyl groups (which are attached to sucrose’s ring structure that is composed of carbon atoms) with three chlorine atoms. This synthetic process makes the new molecule an intensely sweet-tasting, albeit toxic substance that has never been proven to be safe at any dose or with chronic use. Any yet the FDA approved it.
Dr. Betty Martini, a researcher from Duluth, Georgia (www.dorway.com) says: "the controversy rages over Splenda. Is it safe and natural like sugar or is it a chlorinated hydrocarbon? As lawsuits fly, consider the chemistry of this artificial compound."
"The FDA denied approval of aspartame for 16 years, then caved in to political/economic pressure when Don Rumsfeld, CEO of the manufacturer, was brought to Washington by Ronald Reagan (who was rumored to be a NutraSweet addict which is important because dementia is a recognized adverse effect of NutraSweet). A new FDA Commissioner was appointed to approve aspartame as a food additive and then later became a consultant for NutraSweet's public relations firm for $1,000/day on a 10-year contract. Forthcoming has been a global epidemic of disability and death. One might expect the FDA to be more cautious next time, yet it approved the toxic chlorocarbon Splenda without hesitation and without any long term testing on human subjects."
Other poisonous chlorocarbons
There are so many chlorocarbon molecules that have been let loose in the environment by the chemistry industry, that it is impossible to list them all.
Some of the common ones include the liver-destroying carbon tetrachloride; the deadly insecticides chlordane, DDT, Lindane and many others; the multitude of carcinogenic herbicides, including 2,4D and dioxin (Agent Orange, of Vietnam war infamy, is still causing fetal deaths and anomalies among the Vietnamese and death, cancer and diabetes in the exposed US soldiers 40 years later). Most people are aware of toxic PCBs (polychlorinated biphenyls); the ozone-destroying CFCs (chlorofluorocarbons); the toxic polyvinyl chloride (PVC); hexachlorobenzene; the toxic and now-banned germicide hexachlorophene; laundry bleach; and many other carcinogenic herbicides and pesticides. Certain cellular toxins used as chemotherapeutic agents and a host of other lethal substances, carcinogens and even some pharmaceutical drugs (used of course, in sub-lethal doses) are chlorocarbons. There are no totally safe chlorocarbon molecules.
Chlorine gas is not a naturally-occurring substance in nature. It can only be produced through electrolysis, by running an electrical current through a saturated solution of sodium chloride (table salt). That process produces deadly chlorine gas that then, when it comes in contact with any organic compound in nature (all of which contain carbon, oxygen and hydrogen atoms) rapidly combines with the carbon molecules to form nasty compounds, many of which are carcinogens, mutagens and/or neurotoxins.
Blowback
Chlorine gas as a lethal weapon of mass destruction was developed by military scientists in World War I and then quickly banned. The gas was extremely tricky to use, because of its dependence on the fickle winds (the Germans needed easterly winds and the Allies needed westerly ones), which sometimes switched-back dramatically into a “friendly fire” reality. Parenthetically, this “blowback” reality with the poison gas might have been the origin for the CIA term for “disastrous unintended consequences” in the spy and war game universe.
Chlorine gas and volatile chlorocarbons contaminated the St. Louis River valley’s air for decades until stricter regulations changed the Cloquet, MN (upstream-from-Duluth) paper mill’s operations. Emissions from the paper mill’s bleaching operations at that plant resulted in many smelly and unpleasantly memorable air quality problems when I was a medical intern in Duluth 40 years ago. At that time the mill, in addition to fouling the air, was also discharging effluent directly into the St. Louis River, with unprovable-in-a-court-of law toxic effects to the fish, waterfowl and those of us who drank the water that emptied into Lake Superior, Duluth's drinking water source. Certainly there were human carcinogenic and immune-deficiency consequences that have never been, and will never be, proven.
The science of poisonous chlorocarbon molecules
Chlorocarbon molecules, including sucralose, are not nutritive; hence the claim that they have “zero calories”. Such molecules, however, adversely affect human cellular metabolism because they are toxic to various enzyme systems and the body’s mitochondria (the sub-cellular “hearts and lungs” of our cells that, when they sicken or die off, will cause the cell to also sicken or die).
Sucrose is the sugar molecule that the digestive system breaks down into two molecules of glucose. It cannot be broken down in the blood stream. Glucose enters the cells from the capillaries and is used by all cells, especially the brain, as fuel. The brain depends on continuous supplies of glucose as its major fuel and will die if deprived of the substance for even 5 minutes. Brain cells are almost as dependent on glucose as they are on oxygen.
Sucralose, however, does not metabolize into glucose. Thus the sucralose-contaminated person needs to obtain its life-giving glucose from other sources. And yet the pancreas is fooled into sensing that sucralose is glucose and pumps out insulin, which drives the glucose in the blood into cells. The body then senses hypoglycemia (low glucose) which produces hunger, which is then appeased by the desire to eat, especially carbohydrates. I have known many people, especially patients of mine, who ate a lot of carbohydrate foods along with their hunger-inducing diet soda. This goes a long way in explaining why most people who use diet sodas actually gain weight.
Testimony from a victim of synthetic sweeteners
I conclude this Duty to Warn essay with an extended quote from Dr. James Bowen (http://www.wnho.net), himself a victim of Lou Gehrig’s Disease (ALS – amyotrophic lateral sclerosis) because of NutraSweet neurotoxicity: Dr. Bowen believes ingested chlorocarbon damage continues with the formation of other toxins.
"Any chlorocarbons not directly excreted from the body intact can cause immense damage to the processes of human metabolism and, eventually, our internal organs. The liver is a detoxification organ that deals with ingested poisons. Chlorocarbons damage the hepatocytes, the liver's metabolic cells, and destroy them. In test animals Splenda produced swollen livers, as do all chlorocarbon poisons, and also calcified the kidneys of test animals in toxicity studies. The brain and nervous system are highly subject to metabolic toxicities and solvency damages by these chemicals. Their high solvency attacks the human nervous system and many other body systems including genetics and the immune function. Thus, chlorocarbon poisoning can cause cancer, birth defects, and immune system destruction. These are well known effects of Dioxin and PCBs which are known deadly chlorocarbons."
Dr. Bowen continues: "Just like aspartame (NutraSweet), which achieved marketplace approval by the Food and Drug Administration when animal studies clearly demonstrated its toxicity, sucralose also failed in clinical trials with animals. Aspartame created brain tumors in rats. Sucralose has been found to shrink thymus glands (the biological seat of immunity) and produce liver inflammation in rats and mice.
"In the coming months we can expect to see a river of media hype expounding the virtues of Splenda/sucralose. We should not be fooled again into accepting the safety of a toxic chemical on the blessing of the FDA and saturation advertising. In terms of potential long-term human toxicity we should regard sucralose with its chemical cousin DDT, the insecticide now outlawed because of its horrendous long term toxicities at even minute trace levels in human, avian, and mammalian tissues.
"Synthetic chemical sweeteners are generally unsafe for human consumption. This toxin was given the chemical name "sucralose" which is a play on the technical name of natural sugar, sucrose. One is not the other. One is food, the other is toxic; don't be deceived."
For more information on aspartame and Splenda click on the Aspartame Information List on http://www.wnho.net. Dr. Bowen can be seen in the movie "Sweet Misery: A Poisoned World" For the movie call 1-818-349-8822 or email [email protected]
See how aspartame was approved by clicking on http://www.soundandfury.tv/pages/Rumsfeld2.html
Aspartame and Splenda Toxicity Centers, www.holisticmed.com/aspartame
Russell Blaylock, M.D., has published Excitotoxins: The Taste That Kills on the subject, www.russellblaylockmd.com
Source : iHealthTube
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